Month: May 2024

I live in a great city with one of the best medical centers in the country. People come from all over the world seeking care from some of the same doctors and hospitals that are only minutes away from my home. My husband’s life has no doubt been extended by brilliant cardiologists and advanced medical procedures. My father-in-law is alive today because of the genius of doctors who understood his need for emergency surgery and then weeks later interceded when he came down with Covid and was unable to breathe. I cannot complain about the remarkable people who always appear at the right time to bring better health to the people of the Houston metropolitan area. Sadly our medical system is not so kind and efficient in every situation. 

When I was fifteen years old I landed a summer job as a receptionist at the clinic of our family physician. I routed phone calls, welcomed patients, took payments for services and even made appointments for visits. The doctors advised me to keep slots open each day to accommodate patients with emergency issues. Nary a day went by without someone rushing into the office needing help immediately. In every situation one of the doctors would volunteer to see the patient. Only the most serious medical crises warranted a call to an ambulance which would take the patient to a hospital. Sometimes the doctor would even ride along inside the ambulance ministering to the person in crisis. 

Such scenarios are a thing of the past. Phone numbers for most doctors go to a central location only for the purpose of scheduling future appointments. Emergencies are directed to 911 or nearby emergency centers. Nobody shows up at a doctor’s office without an appointment that has been secured weeks or months in advance unless the individual has paid big bucks for concierge care from a doctor with a private practice that often excludes patients with Medicare or Medicaid. 

We like to think that we have the best medical care in the world, but that feeling is only present for those of us with enough insurance to secure a long term relationship with a great doctor. Even then we have to plan ahead for services by making our appointments well in advance of the times when we need them. Doctors are so overwhelmed with patients that they have to prioritize the needs of patients, leaving some to wait for months before ever seeing a doctor face to face. 

At Christmastime I injured my ankle on a Sunday evening. After an hour or so I was unable to put weight on the foot without excruciating pain. I knew that I needed to see someone immediately. Since I had sustained the injury in the upstairs of my home I had to shinny down the stairs on my backside and then hop to the car with the assistance of my husband. He drove me to an emergency center affiliated with Methodist Hospital where the doctor on call took x-rays to find that I did not have a broken bone but my ankle bone was severely bruised and I had a traumatic contusion of the soft tissue in that area. He stabilized the ankle with a boot and told me to rest and ice that area for the next forty eight hours. He also instructed me to inform my primary care physician about the incident. 

I was able to reach my doctor the next morning quite easily via a messaging system. He looked at the x-rays and the comments from the attending physician at the emergency center and recommended that I contact a particular specialist in orthopedics who focuses on injuries to the feet. Her curriculum vitae was outstanding and even better was the realization that her office is only a few miles from my home. Unfortunately she was booked until February 15, more than two months after my injury. The helpful woman making appointments for her looked for other doctors who might have earlier opening but was unable to find anyone who was not booked solidly. She registered me for a February 15 appointment and flagged my request by putting me on a wait list in case someone canceled before that faraway date. 

I mention these things because many Americans are wary of establishing a national healthcare system because they have heard horror stories about such systems in other countries that force patients to wait for months to receive services. Sadly I sense that we are not that far away from the same kind of experiences here in our country. In fact I have been hearing horror stories from younger people with private insurance who are waiting as long as six months to see doctors for concerns that they have. In my own case I have learned to schedule checkups with my doctors a year in advance. In November I signed up for cataract surgery that will take place in June. I sense that our own medical crisis is rapidly encroaching and will no doubt get worse as more of us in the huge Baby Boomer demographic grow older and more prone to developing problems. 

I fully appreciate the medical care that is available to me but I worry that there are more and more people who are being locked out of the system either due to cost or because of long waits for care that does not come as soon as needed. It seems to be true that those with enough money are always going to be fine and even those who are older like me tend to be taken seriously. Somewhere in the middle are the are working people of the United States whose health insurance premiums are rising at the same time that the provided services are shrinking. There are even medical deserts in many parts of the country where finding a doctor can be almost impossible. It’s time to take a very hard look at how we might improve the functioning of our medical system before it is too late and too expensive to do so. 

I’m not complaining. I tend to be quite healthy and my doctors have never once let me down. When I hear about younger people reeling under the cost of medical care and then paying incredible copays while waiting for months for services, I truly wonder if we are doing the right things. We have to insure that every citizen gets the care they need when they need it. It’s time to straighten things out before we have a true crisis. 

I fear death, not mine, but the death of people that I love. I should be accustomed to death by now. I have watched so many who were so important in my life leave this world. My beautiful Uncle Bob was the first person whose death I endured. He was only in his twenties but he had a lethal form of cancer that had already taken one of his legs. When five year old me invaded his privacy I saw him attaching a prosthesis and I was frightened. He somehow managed to explain what was happening to him without scaring me and I have loved him to this very day for his gentle candor. When I was only not yet six years old he breathed his final bit of life. The adults who were grieving him did not seem to realize that I was fully aware of what had happened because Uncle Bob had gently told me what to expect. I have always remembered his dignity and the ways that he fully enjoyed his life to the very end. He has forever remained one of my all time favorite people. 

My father and Uncle Bob were best friends. They had gone to high school together and attended Texas A&M College at the same time. After my mother and father got married they played matchmaker by introducing Uncle Bob to my mother’s sister. Their intrigue worked and Uncle Bob officially became my uncle when he married my Aunt Claudia. They were a beautiful couple and I adored their visits when our home filled with laughter. It never occurred to me that someone so vital would actually die, even as Uncle Bob so honestly told me about his battle with cancer and the fate that might end his life sooner that he had hoped. He was resigned to his fate but determined to get as much out of the time that was left as possible. He was working on earning a Phd., expecting his first child with my aunt, climbing mountains, and spreading love wherever he went. When he died I knew that he was ready because he had told me so. Somehow as a little girl I believed that the death of someone so young was simply a quirk that I would never witness again, but I was wrong. 

I was traumatized when my father died so suddenly and so unexpectedly when I was eight years old. I had no time to ponder the possibility of his leaving. It was almost impossible for me to accept that my eighty year old grandparents were still hale and hearty, but my energetic father who was just reaching his stride at the age of thirty three was gone. I quietly went inside of myself until I was in my early twenties. I felt uncertain all the time and worried about who would be next to fall. Somehow I pushed myself to engage with life the way I had seen my Uncle Bob do, overcoming my reticence to become emotionally involved with others lest I lose them. 

Life has been good to me and now I find myself living in my seventy fifth year still adoring my father and my uncle for the ways that they taught me to grab life and embrace people and adventures. I sometimes believe that I have loved each individual that I have encountered just a bit more deeply than I might otherwise have done because I so viscerally understood how fragile each life is. We do not know from one moment to the next who might be the next to die, so we should not waste a single moment with them. 

I have lost beloved people one by one. My grandmother, Minnie Bell, would be an old woman of eighty eight years at the time of her death, but it was still difficult for fifteen year old me to watch her die so bravely and so concerned about how we would all be without her. My cousin, Sandra, Uncle Bob’s only child, would die at the age of sixteen when I was only twenty one. My sometimes gruff but always just a teddy bear, Uncle Andy, had a heart attack that killed him instantly when he was only forty. My Grandma Ulrich followed him in death soon after. Then there was a long pause in death’s grip on people in my live that allowed me to set aside my anxieties about losing family members and friends. Life was fun and easy and I grabbed every bit of it that I was able to do.

I was not quite in my late thirties when my Grandpa Little died. He was one hundred eight years old and had become my hero in every sense of the word. He was wise and kind and very tired of grieving for lost loved ones. He had lost all three of his children by then and many of his grandchildren as well. All of his peers were gone and he had was ready to move on to whatever the next stop might be. He was unafraid to die but weary of watching those around him leave him behind.  

I was in my forties when my sweet Uncle William died. Somehow his death seemed to be part of the natural order of things because he was an older man. Then came my Uncle Paul who had also managed to live a good long time. My sweet mother-n-law, Mary, who was born with a heart defect beat the odds and lived to the age of seventy six even though she had been told from an early age that she would not make it past her twenties. 

It was when my peers, friends the same age as I was, began to die that I felt those same pangs of distress that had seized my heart when I was a little girl. My dear friend and confidante, Pat, died far to soon. The two of us had so many more adventures and milestones to share. She was my chosen sister who I thought would walk by my side until we were old ladies but that was not to be. Our incredible friend, Egon, had a fatal heart attack one day and I struggled to understand why he too would not grow old with us. Then came the death of his wife, Marita, and the passing of Pat’s husband, Bill. Suddenly friendships that Mike and I had so enjoyed were gone while the two of us still had years to journey without them in this life. 

My mother made it to the age of eighty four. She had lung cancer that might have ended with horrible pain, but she was saved from that kind of horror by a quick transition from this life that was beautiful and so perfect given all of the sacrifices and love that she had so freely given to every soul that she ever met. Nonetheless, I have missed her more and more with each passing year and have grown to better understand how incredible she was.  

I’ve been to funerals for my peers and for my cousins. My Aunt Claudia and her twin sister died within weeks of each other. My longest living Aunt Valeria died during the Covid pandemic when she was just shy of being one hundred years old. Now I am seventy five years and becoming all too aware that I will witness more deaths at a must more continuous pace. Therein lie my fears. It is so hard to lose someone even when we believe that they have transitioned to a beautiful afterlife. The pain and grief of death lingers and I dread those feelings and the changes that they will engender.

I am at a stage in life in which each day moves me more closely to my own final moments. Somehow that does not scare me as much as enduring the deaths of people I love. My life has been wonderful because of the people with whom I have shared it. I fear losing more of them as the years go by. That may be one of the most difficult challenges that lies ahead. I hope that I will face each day with the same beautiful spirit that I witnessed in my Uncle Bob did so long ago. He taught five year old me how to savor each moment and live with joy regardless of inevitable challenges. His lesson has served me well. 

I can’t remember ever having a cup of hot tea when I was growing up. My beverage drinking experiences mostly centered on drinking water or milk, but not with meals. Somewhere along the way my mother heard or read that digestion of food was better served without sipping on some kind of liquid while eating. She encouraged us to drink either before or after the meal, not while we were in the process of consuming it. 

The adults in my family were coffee drinkers. My mother launched each day with an unadulterated cup of brew. She eschewed cream and sugar and never had any interest in adding flavors to the dark liquid that seemed to jumpstart her brain each morning. As a child I learned to stay out of her way until the magic of a cup of coffee eventually jolted her awake and returned her to her generally pleasant disposition. Before that moment it was best not to provoke her ire. 

My maternal grandmother famously brewed her coffee in a large enamel pot. Her concoction would never have been chosen as a contender for the delight of true coffee aficionados, but it seemed adequate for those needing a small dose of caffeine. I am told by those who love coffee that it was little more than hot water with a tiny dash of coffee. They called it weak, but I called it my grandmother’s attempt to be gracious and hospitable to anyone who came to visit, including her grandchildren. She never failed to bring us enamel cups filled with more sugar and milk than coffee within minutes of our arrival at her home. To this day I can see her proudly distributing the love that her concoction always signified to me. 

I never developed a love of coffee like most people have. Somehow I was never able to acquire a taste for it even though I like its aroma. My mother-in-law would introduce me to the drink that really stirred my passion. After Sunday dinners when the men left us to watch whatever sport happened to be on television my mother-in-law always made a pot of hot tea that the two of us enjoyed while we talked about family, books, and philosophy. 

My mother-in-law’s family had immigrated to the United States from Newcastle, England just before the outbreak of World War I. She had a grandmother who danced a jig and a mother who taught her how to brew a pot and share a cuppa the very British way. She would use a kettle to boil the water and then warm the pot before placing the tea inside and pouring the water into the container. She new exactly how long to allow the tea to steep in the hot water until the perfect chemical reaction had taken place. I absolutely delighted in sharing that lovely ritual with her. 

Before long it was well known that I loved tea of any kind, but that my favorites were Earl Grey and English Breakfast. Nonetheless, I tried many different varieties and learned that there were few that did not please me. I began to collect tea pots and tins of different blends. I’d launch my day with a cup of tae and imbibe again in the afternoon when my energy began to flag. I delighted in the ritual of making tea and often laughed when I learned that my mother-in-law’s very English mother had always use Lipton tea bags to make her own brew. 

Both my grandmother and my mother-in-law were delightful hostesses. The coffee from Grandma and the tea from Mary Isabel defined their graciousness and generosity. I suppose that the symbolism of sharing time with a warm cup of brew meant more to me than what was actually inside my grandmother’s enamel cups and my mother-in-law’s fine china. The time shared whether wordlessly or with dynamic discussion was priceless. 

After joining Ancestry I learned more and more about my dual background. I’m almost perfectly half Eastern European and half British Isles. I’d like to think that my love of tea is a natural evolution from one side of my ancestors. It took my mother-in-law to introduce me to a tradition that must surely have been a staple in the homes of my long ago relations who came to the colonies before the United States was even an idea. 

I introduced my grandchildren to tea time when they were rather small. Some of them really enjoyed both the tradition and the taste of the brew. Others navigated toward coffee which seemed to provide them with a bigger punch of caffeine for awakening to another day of studying. Only one grandson seems to still enjoy taking the time to let the tea steep in the pot while we talk about the world. He still plans to one day take whomever ends up being his wife to the high tea time at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, a delightful experience that we enjoyed together on a vacation trip of long ago. 

It is quite remarkable how much impact two different kinds of brew have had on the history of the world. The stories of coffee and tea are more than just the way we start our days. They changed the world in both big and quite personal ways. For me they both represent love and in the case of tea, discovery. I can’t drink either one without thinking of the two remarkable women who gave me my first tastes of the drinks that would awaken my feelings in such positive ways.  

The word entitlement can mean different things depending on how we think about that word. For some an entitlement is a belief that there are certain moral aspects of life for which every human has a claim. Among such entitlements are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It might also be argued that equal opportunity and justice are also natural entitlements. Some people see the word entitlement as an expectation, a of feeling of being owed something without merit. Philosophers have grappled with the distribution of rights from the beginning of time. 

One idea is utilitarian. It suggest that rights should be distributed in a manner that provides the greatest good to the greatest number of individuals. Another concept is unbiased capitalism which presumes that what people need will naturally trickle down to them if simply left to the ingenuity and hard wokd of humankind. A more recent study of justice insists that innate biases tend to insure that some people are perennially left out. It suggests that since everyone is entitled to certain concepts of moral fairness we must often be ready to engineer a process that takes into account those least likely to achieve that same goals as everyone else due to circumstances beyond their control. 

Imagine a race for justice in which the wealthiest and most influential among us are given a head start of several laps. There might be some souls with incredible natural talents who have a chance catch up with them through great effort, but it is unlikely that they would do more than come close. Then consider someone with physical handicaps struggling to keep apace and others who were not even aware that justice was only available by placing in a race. An individual’s circumstances due to lack of money or influence or physical acuity make them less and less likely to arrive at the finish line while the “goodies’ are still available, the level of justice that they would earn would be dangerously low even if it existed at all. A better way of doing things would be to insure that even the most downtrodden among finds a reserve of justice waiting for them when their circumstances impede their ability to run for their lives. 

Entitlement is a basic right, not an attitude. We may be created equal but the truth is that where, when and into which family we are born will be a great determining factor in how well we enjoy that equality.

I began my life in a democratic republic with intelligent and loving parents who provided well for me. I inherited their genetic abilities to learn easily and their good health that provided the energy that I needed to grow and prosper in the world. When my father died some of my advantage crumbled. Money was no longer as abundant in propelling me forward to my future. My family’s needs sometimes overwhelmed my own hard work. It was as though I had lost momentum in the race of life with a major stumble that pushed me farther and farther behind. Still, simply by nature of my good fortune of being in the right place at the right time I have been able to live a mostly decent life. I have enjoyed enough access to human entitlements to feel that life has been fair for me even if making it so took more effort on my part. 

As a teacher I encountered young people whose circumstances were so dire that it was difficult to watch their struggles. It sometimes felt as though an invisible hand was blocking them from even moving from the starting line. They were born with innumerable handicaps that would make their own races seem painfully hopeless. One aspect of justice for them involved providing them with education and sometimes the only meals they would eat each day. I watched some of them grow stronger and more and more able to continue in the race, but there were others who were so bombarded with difficulties that I worried that they might never move from the challenges that held them back. 

We might be inclined to believe that every person has an equal chance of reaching the finish line in a wealthy country like our own but we all know that even here there is a certain level of unfairness that awards the wealthiest and most mentally and physically fit before those who lack such advantages. Sometimes even ignorance of how things work can impede people for all of their lives, leaving them wondering why they work so hard but never seem to get ahead. Society is complex and regardless of how free and it is and how many opportunities there are a stratification of influence tends to insure that some people get all that they need and others are left struggling to survive. Unless we work to insure that everyone has what we all should be entitled to have, our system still has room to improve. 

There are no utopian places anywhere on this earth. Some are particularly horrific and others do their best to fairly distribute the rights of humans. It is still a work in progress. We know that taking away incentives by simply distributing things equally has never worked just as relying on democracy alone to take all people into account can leave much suffering. There are times when we know that we have to provide for people who are unable to provide for themselves for whatever reason. We should each be willing to contribute in ways proportionate to our wealth, influence and natural abilities. Nobody should be so far ahead that the race is rigged in their favor. At the same time nobody should be so far back that they have no chance to win. We know what is fair and what is not. If we cooperate in distributing the universal entitlements that we all should have we can still have room for a fair competition in which some get the prize but everyone feels that they have won. We are all entitled to life, liberty, happiness, and a fair shot at enjoying those things. 

I am a woman and I often contemplate what that has meant. I also wonder what it is truly like being a man. I grew up in a time when baby girls wore pink and boys wore blue. Because I had no hair until I was almost two years old strangers would ask my mother if I was a boy in spite of the frilly outfits that I wore. I suppose that in the minds of those who saw me I was supposed to have a head of delightful curls in order to be deemed a proper female. It seems that I was stereotyped from the beginning of my life much as all of us are. We endure biases both subtle and blatant during our lives. Mostly we learn to live with them even as they sometimes bother us. 

I was a skinny little girl with baby fine hair that tended to do whatever it chose to do rather than obeying the laws of style. The words that I heard most from the people who described me were “cute” and “smart.” In the nineteen fifties and sixties these were not exactly the kind of phrases that felt complimentary in the world of being female. I’d hear my cousin being referred to as pretty or beautiful, which she was, and feel somehow inadequate in the expectations of the world’s view of women that seemed so prevalent. I became a bit shy and uncertain about my worth when I gazed at my own mother who was gorgeous along with her intelligence. Nonetheless, my parents seemed to love me just as I was and they did their best to make me feel special. 

My confidence struggled to unfold as a late bloomer. Just as it took my hair longer than usual to grow as an infant, it seemed that everything about my physical development was slow in progressing. I looked like a ten year old when my female peers were developing into young women. Because so much societal influence taught me that beauty and appearance mattered I became shy and self critical. There was only one trait that kept me feeling good about myself. I was a quick learner, a rock star student who concentrated on making the most of the hand that nature had dealt me. Still, I sometimes got the idea that society was unimpressed with intellectual women. Even my own male cousins referred to me as the “smart one” and my lovely cousin as the “pretty one.” Such a reminder seemed to diminish my worth but I only laughed when I heard such things. I feigned a blasé attitude to shield myself. 

A great deal has happened in the world to change attitudes about women, even within my family. A conversation with my beautiful cousin taught me that she was just as dismayed by being categorized only by her appearance as I had been. She proved to be an incredibly talented and intelligent woman but all too often the world focused mainly on her face and her hair just as it had looked at me through a lens of stereotyping. We both laughed at the thought that a woman’s worth is all too often measured with antiquated ideas. We realized that each of us in our own ways was both pretty and smart. We wondered why our male counterparts had not been judged by similar standards but then realized that even they had to overcome stereotypes about strength and athleticism and other attributes thought to be the domain of men. 

Women are so much in the news these days. Their childbearing capabilities or difficulties have become political fodder. Men are audaciously voicing opinions on how women should serve the world by having families. There is a toxic atmosphere in which disagreements involving women sometimes devolve into name calling that refers to estimations of their appearance rather than the merit of their ideas. It is a kind of regression that worries me, not so much for myself as for my granddaughter and other young women just beginning their lives in the adult world. It reminds me of the painful estimations of both me and my cousin who were judged according to a misleading set of standards that did not take into account the totality of who each of us were. It is the kind of boorish stereotyping that should have been relegated to the past. 

There are now more women in colleges than men. Women have proven to be excellent in virtually every type of work. We have learned to value the beauty of an individual without a rubric of standards. When we begin to see people as they are we understand that every person is lovely and worthy of our admiration. There is no one standard for judging, and in fact there should be no judging. We are unique and wonderful with or without good hair or a beautiful face . There are many forms of intelligence as well that go far beyond book learning. Our goal should be to look beyond the prejudices that have too often created barriers for women. 

I have become comfortable in my own skin. I know who I am and I really like myself. It took awhile for me to ignore the meanness that is sometimes hurled at women. I align myself with people who have eschewed superficialities. I most enjoy people who are willing to embrace me as I am. Women are so much more than we have traditionally given them credit for being, just as we have learned that there really should never be something called a typical man. Girls don’t have to wear pink and boys don’t have to wear blue. We simply have to love ourselves as we are. As the saying goes, “God does not make junk.” If we truly believe that then we will begin to see the radiance of every person we encounter and we will love and support them just as they are.